How border wall construction hurts local communities and ecosystems, and how it contributes to border deaths is the focus of this online panel discussion. It includes organizers from San Diego/Tijuana, Southern Arizona, and the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. This is the third of five US-Mexico Border Fact-Finding panels about the impact of US immigration policies on human rights along the border, part of the Zooming to the Border for Human Rights series sponsored by the People’s Tribune and El Tribuno del Pueblo.
Bob Lee: Should we go ahead and start?
Pedro Rios: I think so. I think now is a good time to begin.
Bob Lee: Okay, well I’m just going to talk for about 10 seconds. I’m Bob Lee. I’m the editor of the People’s Tribune. I want to welcome everybody. We’re going to have a very good panel. I just wanted to let everybody know that we are recording this meeting and we’re going to record the remarks of the panelists and we’ll be posting those online at a future date. And with that time, I’ll turn it over to Pedro so we can get started.
Pedro Rios: Thank you Bob, and thank you, Laura. Both of whom have been the pioneers in developing the initial idea of having a delegation of activists, researchers, and independent journalists. Sponsored by the Chicago-based El Tribuno Pueblo and the People’s Tribune for people to people fact-finding mission, a delegation to the US/Mexico border. Unfortunately, because of the pandemic we were sidelined a bit, but we got creative and the idea was to host a series of panels from before leading up toward the elections, for us to hear directly from people who live, who work, who make their lives possible along the US/Mexico borderlands. This way offers an opportunity to expand what the teachings that our presenters will have to offer for everyone who has an opportunity to hear from them. The idea will be that from these presentations, and this is the third one in a series of about 5, will be to develop a report that will then be used to submit to elected officials, to other International bodies, with the idea of being able to expand and present those voices from the borderlands.
So, it’s been so far a diverse group of people who have participated in the panels and who have presented, and all of them have been fantastic and we have a great list of presenters tonight who I’ll introduce in a little bit. This third 90-minute, what we are calling Zooming to the Border for Human Rights, will focus on the impact of the border wall in Borderland communities, responses and proposals for dignity and self-determination. Because we know that we can outline and highlight the problematic nature of border walls, but it’s important to learn about how communities resist. It’s important to hear how communities are resilient in spite of such atrocities that we are seeing in our communities, and support to take those voices and present them to people who are not along the border, and I don’t get to hear directly from impacted communities.
As we go along, I will invite you to place questions in the chat. Please remember to keep yourself muted with the exception of our speakers who will present.
I wanted to just briefly mention a little bit of the framing around militarization. When we talk about border wall construction, we can go back all the way back to the Eisenhower years of different types of border wall infrastructure that was placed along the US/Mexico border. The more contemporary time-period, the past 40 years for instance, with Jimmy Carter’s Tortilla Curtain if you’re familiar with that, was in 1977 and 1978 the placement of about 6 miles of a fence with barbed wire and that created what was known as the Tortilla Curtain, which was reminiscent of the Iron Curtain of the of the Cold War. Going into the 90s with the implementation of various operations like Gatekeeper in San Diego, Hold the Line in El Paso, these meant to beef up enforcement along the borderlands with the idea that it would create territorial denial, or that point what was known as prevention through deterrence. That prevention through deterrence not only included an increase of border agents, but also an increase in infrastructure including the border wall.
At this moment, as of September 4th of this year, so as of two weeks ago, there are approximately about 689 miles of border wall that have been installed. This represents about 35% of the current stretch of border between the US and Mexico, which is approximately about 1954 miles. To just break that down a little bit more, that’s roughly at a cost of about 24.4 million dollars per mile. Since Trump took office, there have been an additional 317 miles of border wall. Now this includes eight miles of new primary border wall, so if you’re standing in Mexico looking into the US that’s the primary border wall, so 8 miles of new primary border wall. About 27 miles of new secondary wall and the remainder 282 miles of replacement wall, meaning that, that replacement wall replaced infrastructure that was already in place that predates the Trump era. It includes the Normandy-style fencing, these are like X’s that we might as we’re driving from San Diego County to Imperial County. X’s that are along the border, pedestrian-style fence, old, corrugated steel mats that were placed during the Bush, father and Clinton years and other sorts of vehicle barriers. I just wanted to provide that framework so we can have a sense of what we’re talking about.
For our presenters today, the two main questions that I wanted us to interrogate are, the first one would be to describe how border wall construction has impacted your community or your area of work and any short-term or long-term challenges that that has created. And then secondly, how has your community responded, how has your community resisted.
In the second question the idea is to look at how we uphold our dignity in the face of subject, terror that border walls create, especially because they funnel people through a very dangerous, treacherous train like the mountains and deserts that have caused a human rights disaster along the Borderlands with close to 10,000 people that have died over the past 25 years, 26 years now, when operation gatekeeper was put in place. And then also, what self-determination looks like as your community is confronting the madness of these border walls.
Those are the two set of questions that I’m hoping that our panelists will interrogate within a short 7 to 10 minutes presentation, and then after our panelists present, we’ll have time for a Q & A.
Our first speaker is Norma Herrera. Norma is from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. She was born in Tamaulipas, Mexico and grew up in the Rio Grande Valley. She coordinates a grassroots coalition working to stop border wall construction in the Rio Grande Valley, and supports efforts to free people from ICE detention. Her work includes building a base of directly impacted communities, to organize against punitive government policies that cause harm and criminalize migration. Norma you’re going to be our first speaker. Thank you. Before you go, I just want to reiterate my appreciation for all of you. I know you’re very busy, so thank you so much for agreeing to be panelists today, and thank all of you for joining this important conversation. Norma, please take it away.
Norma Herrera: Thank you, Pedro. Good afternoon, everyone. I’m glad to be on the call today. I’ve been having some internet connection issues this week, so I will turn off the video today just to ensure that you can actually hear me. Just give me a second, so I can share my screen. Okay, my name is Norma, I work for the Equal Voice network. Today I will talk about some of the impacts of walls in the so-called Rio Grande Valley, including on Democratic processes and community decision-making on the preservation of historic, indigenous and environmental sites, on flooding in the area, on access to the Rio Grande river, and on our constitutional right to equal protection under the law.
To start with, even where there are examples of Congress trying to carve out exemptions to border wall construction, or require consultation with frontline communities about border walls, customs has continued to ignore us. In the fiscal year 2019 Appropriations Bill, Congress required “consultation with towns in Stark County about the alignment and design of the border wall” so these towns included Roma, Escobares, La Grulla, Rio Grande City, and Salineño. Local officials and CBP were in conversations about the alignment of the wall, and the government was also collecting public comments about the effects of these walls in these areas, and then Customs and Border Protection issued a contract on March 2nd for 15 miles of wall in these five towns. Stark County officials thought they were still in consultation with CBP and they were essentially blindsided. CBP had received 2,566 public comments, which expressed concerns about everything from the wall’s impact on wildlife and habitat, flooding, historical sites and tribal lands, property devaluation, cost of construction, and humanitarian concerns to name just a few. On April 30th the government published its response to these comments and essentially just brushed them all aside, brushed all these concerns aside and indicated that they would continue with the same plans that they had before the consultation. The process was clearly just for show and the voices of local communities were not heard.
Congress is also prohibited border wall construction within historic cemeteries in fiscal year 2020 Appropriations. The Eli Jackson Cemetery, which is just behind the area in this picture, contains remains of Carrizo Comecrudo tribe members. The Carrizo Comecrudo are the original people of the so-called Rio Grande Valley, and this area was the site of Yalui Village, which is what you’re looking at in this picture, this is where the tribe camped out for a year to impede border wall construction. Then right next to this area is Jackson Ranch Church, which is the oldest Protestant Church in South Texas and that site also includes a historic cemetery. The church and cemeteries are part of a ranching settlement founded in 1857 by Nathaniel Jackson and Matilda Hicks, a former slave. This area served as a stop along the Underground Railroad and the Jackson’s house escaped slaves and helped ferry them across the river to Mexico, where slavery has been abolished. Even though they’re not building within the cemeteries, like Congress prohibited, the walls 150-foot enforcement zone may still cut into these sights and because they’ll be stranded south of the wall, they may still be inaccessible to Indigenous and local communities. Very quickly, because it’s going to come up again, the enforcement zone is on a 150-foot area consisting of all-weather roads, lighting towers, cameras and other surveillance technology. A CBP official told the Ramirez family, who are descendants of Nathaniel on Matilda, that the government was considering a reduced enforcement zone in this area of the cemeteries, but nothing official has been confirmed and it’s quite possible that they may still end up into the cemeteries, and construction, ultimately, may still unearth grave sites with no headstones are markers while they’re all they’re building.
Construction has now started and a member of our local No Border Wall Coalition, who was also a member of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe, took these images a couple of days ago. You can see South West Valley Construction has already broken ground on this field that sits just east of Eli Jackson and Jackson Ranch, and the survey marker there in the middle is right next to Eli Jackson, which you can see off in the back of the picture on the right-hand side. Just minutes before this call, I learned that a federal judge today signed a temporary restraining order forcing Southwest Valley Constructors to stop construction 100 feet from the cemetery, and they’ll schedule a hearing and hopefully that will indefinitely stop construction.
In the fiscal year 2019 Appropriations, Congress exempted 5 locations in the Valley from border walls in response to large demonstrations and community mobilization to protect these historic and environmentally sensitive sites, so these include certain tracks of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, La Lomita, which is the 19th century Catholic chapel, Benson Rio Grande Valley State Park, the National Butterfly Center, and the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. Here we are seeing CBP defy the intent of Congress. There’s a privately-owned levy, a 1/3 of a mile long, that has a common boundary with Santa Ana and because it’s technically privately owned the government still plans to build the border wall on it. That means that the hundred 150-foot zone around the wall, which again involved complete clearing of the land. This will cut into the refuge, so border wall construction will still negatively affect Santa Ana, despite the clear intent of Congress to protect it.
Additionally, in response to requests for comments, the US Fish and Wildlife service told CBP last summer that the plan border barrier construction, this is a direct quote, “will negatively impact approximately 30% of Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge tracks, these tracks will become unavailable and make the long-term goal of providing contiguous forested areas along the Rio Grande of South Texas for wildlife, breeding birds, and ocelots, and jaguarundis, no longer feasible.” This image here is of an ocelot, which is an endangered wild cat native to the region and it depends on habitat provided by the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the recovery plan for the species includes connecting the populations in Texas and Mexico to provide a migratory quarter, so this project will obviously be made that much more difficult by a border wall disrupting ocelot migration routes.
Building on the Rio Grande floodplain will mean serious flooding for colonials on the walls path. When the Rio Grande river floods naturally at certain times of the year, border wall act like dams. They clogged up debris and vegetation and prevent the natural flow flood waters, so this means that communities on both sides of the border, here and in Mexico, face the risk of catastrophic flooding. According to reporting by the Texas Observer, half of the 64 miles of border wall planned for Stark County will be in the floodplain. Many of these border wall miles will go through colonias, which are these little settlements outside of City Limits that already struggle with bad drainage infrastructure. These Colonials have low income residents and serious flooding could be devastating to their quality of life and in the worst case scenario, catastrophic flooding could lead to preventable deaths. Border walls will also severely limit access to the Rio Grande River for border residents and wildlife.
There are few towns that will be affected that I wanted to highlight today. Salineño is a riverside town where residents use the river recreationally. It’s particularly treasured birding spot, and the Salineño preserve, is known internationally for bird species that are unique to the area and really found nowhere else in this so-called United States. The preserve will unfortunately be cut in half, and one half of it will remain South of the wall. The town itself, which has historically used the river recreationally, will be cut off from the Rio Grande and the government has not really guaranteed that the public will retain access to the river. This image here is the riverfront home of Naida Alvarez, which is a member of the local No Border Wall Coalition, so that the government is currently trying to sue her to build the wall on her property and that will limit her ability to enjoy this beautiful view of the river that you see here.
Then there’s Los Hermanos, so this picture here is of Alieda Garza. We stopped in this spot because we were planning a community event that would lead folks down into the river, so we were scoping out the spot and we ran into this family fishing and using into the river recreationally, and it was interesting, we had this long conversation about whether the wall was necessary or not. And this family that’s here in the picture, well some of them were immigrants and some of them believed that the wall was necessary to stop migrants from entering the US. Ironically, if the wall had been built they would not have access to the very spot they were standing on. I know we’re here to talk about the impact of our oppressive government, but I just wanted to recognize that sometimes the oppression lives in our very own community and sometimes that’s when it’s hardest to confront.
So, waiving of laws. The Real ID Act, which was passed in 2005 in the aftermath of 9/11 and during the so-called war on terror, this gives the federal government the authority to waive all federal laws in the interest of “national security” and I’m putting that in quotes because I think a lot of us know that ensuring national security is a made up standard. It really only applies to things that threaten the white power structure. Bush and Trump have used this authority in order to expedite border wall construction. When Trump waives protections, like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), this means that border wall construction is happening without environmental impact reviews because border walls don’t comply with MEPA the government essentially just makes stuff up as they go along, and they provide insincere responses to concerns that are submitted by the public and this process really allows no room for the community to truly be heard.
Again, because border walls don’t comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, Trump has actively blasting native burial sites across the southern border, including in the Tohono O’odham lands in so-called Arizona, which I think other folks on this call can speak to you better than I can. What this means in effect is that border communities are placing an assault on our constitutional right to equal protection under the law, which is the argument behind a recent lawsuit brought forth by nearby Zapata County, that’s close to the valley, and two border landowners in Texas, and this year is just a sampling of all the laws waived to build border walls, but there are many more.
Lastly, if I can speak briefly for community resistance here in the valley, work that has been led by many other folks in this area, in the last few years there have been mass mobilizations to protect Santa Ana, La Lomita Chapel, Benson State Park, and the National Butterfly Center, which is what forced Congress’ hand and led to these areas being exempted from construction in the first place. In this image, here folks are lined up along the route of the proposed wall at Santa Ana, and this would have bisected the wall, it would have bisected the refuge and left half of it south of the wall. The Carriza Comecrudo, again the original people with so-called Rio Grande Valley, created Yalui Village and put their bodies on the line at the side of Eli Jackson Cemetery, which is what along with advocacy from families with ties to cemeteries, again forced Congress to exempt them. It’s them continuing to fight that’s really led to this temporary restraining order that was just announced today. Along with protests and demonstrations, before the pandemic the local Coalition was also canvassing in towns on the lost path as you saw, and we were informing residents of the right to sue the government and slow down the process of having their land ceased as well as connect them to pro bono legal resources.
A key part of our strategy has been to slow down as much as possible in the lead-up to the presidential election. Right now, we’re planning a funeral procession from a staging site to the side of construction near Eli Jackson and Jackson Ranch. Our region has been hit really hard by the pandemic and we want to highlight the alarming rate of Covid-19 related deaths here in the valley, and the absolute absurdity of wasting money on useless steel and concrete instead of life-saving resources. For us, self-determination means telling our stories, shaping our own narratives, supporting indigenous communities in their fight to protect their ancestral lands, and using creative action to compel elected officials to serve our interests and not those of a racist xenophobia administration. Thank you for your time today. That’s it for me.
Pedro Rios: Thank you so much, Norma. Very enlightening. I think there’s a lot there, and I think it’s very difficult to cover the impact of the border wall within the short time that we have. Definitely, a window into how that resistance is taking place and just to highlight in terms of the waiver authority, and then I’m sure maybe a few others will speak on this, that waiver authority which has empowered the Secretary of the Department Homeland Security to waive over 30 or so laws, and so forth, has been put into place 30 time. 5 times by Bush’s Son, and 25 times by Trump, so it just goes to show how much of a reach of an authority by an elected official and the impact that it has on local communities.
To continue, I’d like to ask, Laiken Jordahl, who is the borderlands campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity. He works to protect Wildlife ecosystems and communities throughout the US/Mexico on Borderlands, and draw attention to the cost of border wall construction and border militarization. Before joining the center, Laiken worked with the National Park Service studying threats to wilderness character throughout the Rocky Mountain West, including Big Bend National Park and Organ Pipe National Monument. He has also worked as a backcountry trail builder, a clan farmer and a legislative fellow in the US House of Representatives, and if you have an opportunity to follow Laiken, he has very intuitive information and informational stuff that he puts out on Twitter, so definitely give him a follow. Laiken, please present. Thank you.
Laiken Jordahl: Thank you so much Pedro. It’s such an honor to be here with colleagues and compas across the so-called US/Mexico borderland. I’m going to give you a little snapshot of what we’re seeing in Arizona. I’m going to share my screen to show some photos. While I do that, big-time solidarity with Norma and the RGV, and hope to make it back down there soon to see you. I am based in Tucson, occupied O’odham homelands. Actually, before I started my job at the Center for Biological Diversity, I worked at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, which has become one of the biggest flashpoint in terms of wall construction, in the struggle against wall construction. My job for the park service was assessing the biggest threats to wilderness, the biggest threats to the environment and wildlife in this area. By some stroke of luck, bad luck I guess, I got the job two weeks before Trump took office and was inaugurated. At this time, I was told that my boss is at the monument not to write about the border wall, which was unbelievable to me because the single biggest threat to this area was the threat of wall construction, was the threat of having this peaceful National monument and Wilderness Area turned into an industrial construction zone blasted with flood lights, drained of groundwater, and that was my last term with the park service. I quit my job at park service, and I joined the Center for Biological Diversity where I have been able to actively advocate for and talk about the impact of wall construction without having to be censored by the administration.
When I worked at Organ Pipe, this is what the border looked like, and up until about a year ago, this is what the physical border at Organ Pipe looked like. As you can see, these small barriers, they’re called vehicle barriers as Pedro mentioned earlier, they’re completely permeable to Wildlife. Wildlife can pass over or under, and people could jump right over under these barriers as well. Up until this year, most of the Arizona border in a lot of the borderlands had this kind of barrier along the physical border. Now if you go to this exact same location, this is what you’ll see. This is a solid 30-ft concrete and steel border wall that rips the landscape in two. As you can see it’s not just the wall, but they bulldoze this massive swath of land, and this is land often full of artifacts and archaeological sites. This is land that did not have any archaeological surveys done before all the destruction ensued, and again, this is happening in a national park, in designated wilderness, in a UNESCO biosphere Reserve, in a place that is so special it has all of these degrees of Federal Protection that are supposed to stop projects and destruction like this this from occurring. This picture kind of sums it up for me, this is an organ pipe cactus that has been chopped up and bulldozed into a trash heap in order to make way for the wall. This is the exact species the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument was designated to protect, and this is what we’re seeing across the Borderlands. We’re watching the administration destroy everything. These wildlife refuges, wilderness areas, and monuments were enacted to protect simply because they’re able to strong-arm the agencies, like the park service in this case into allowing wall construction to unfold on these fragile, irreplaceable lands.
This is another picture I took, I believe this March, of these two beautiful ancient saguaro cactuses. For people who aren’t from Arizona, these are like the icons of the Sonoran Desert. These beautiful ancient cactuses take about 75 years to grow even a single arm, so these two saguaros in this picture are probably 150, maybe 200, years old. They are almost certainly older than the border itself since it was imposed on this landscape. I was out on this tour with an LA Times journalist that day, and I told her to take a good look at these two cactuses because they are right at the edge of the area border patrol was bulldozing to make the wall. I told her there’s a good chance they might not be there for that much longer. I went and I pitched a tent that night and I came back the next day, about 10 in the morning, and they were gone. I almost had that moment where you realize you’re dreaming. You think this can’t possibly be right, there’s no way that these two ancient saguaros could be destroyed in a matter of 12 hours, but sure enough I flipped back and forth from photo to photo, and I was in the exact same spot. It was just stunning to me to see the pace of this destruction of these cactuses that have lived hundreds of years just destroyed overnight to make the wall. We’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of cactuses like this be destroyed, likely numbers into the thousands by now. Of course, this is an ecological disaster. These cactuses are homes for birds, bats, owls, for wildlife. They stabilize the soil, and they’re also deeply, deeply sacred to the O’odham who view these saguaros as the embodiment of their ancestors. When I’ve been out in the Organ Pipe with my O’odham friends, they’ve described seeing these cactuses chopped up like seeing a dead relative. It’s so deeply troubling in a way that I know I will never be able to fully understand. This is the pattern we’re seeing all across Arizona.
This is a drone shot that we took a couple weeks ago of the Coronado National Memorial. This is southeast of Tucson, again this is a National Park unit, these are protected federal lands. As you can see in this picture, they are quite literally blowing up a Mountainside in designated critical habitat for Jaguars, which are known to cross the border here, in a National Memorial. In a photo like this, this looks like a mountaintop removal operation or some sort of mining operation for. The damage from the wall is so much more than just the wall, it’s destroying and unraveling the entire ecosystem in these areas where we are seeing construction occur. This is another wildlife refuge, and we’ve seen these ancient mountains just blasted and bulldozed and destroyed in order to make way for a wall, which of course, will do nothing to solve the real causes of immigration. It will push migrants further into remote areas towards their deaths, and it will stop wildlife dead in their tracks. These Tinajas Atlas mountains are an important area for desert bighorn sheep to cross the border, now that the walls are going up, those migratory quarters will be slammed closed.
As Norma mentioned, the only way any of this is happening, the only way any of this is legal, is because every single legal protection, every single law that applies everywhere else in this country, has been cast aside to rush wall construction. That means that we’re not protected in the borderlands. The Endangered Species Act does not apply here. The Clean Water Act does not apply here. The Safe Drinking Water Act does not apply here. Our communities, our wildlife and our protected lands received no federal protection, that’s all at the discretion of the elected official, as Pedro mentioned. We’re already seeing the impacts.
This picture was sent to me about a month ago from a former colleague. This is at Organ Pipe. This is a photo of the mule deer that wound up dead in the shadow of the board wall. This deer was doing what that species has evolved to do for thousands of years. Wandering through the desert in the hottest month of the year in search of food, in search of water. This year for the first time in evolutionary history, this deer wound up against a landscape scale obstruction. The deer most likely wandered back and forth along the wall looking for a place to pass. It was hit by probably a construction vehicle and killed. I’m sure this is a fate that many other animals are facing. I’ve heard accounts of other foxes and wildlife already found dead in the shadow of the wall, and these are stretches of wall that just went up months ago. This fragments habitat stops wildlife migration dead in their tracks, and it’s just one more way in which we are unraveling these ecosystems.
If folks have been following the news last week, we had two incredibly courageous O’odham women who actually put their bodies on the line to stop border wall construction at Organ Pipe. One of them sat in a bulldozer while another sat under another piece of construction equipment, and they refused to move. They’re at Oregon Pipe, which is Ak-Chin O’odham ancestral land. These women were doing what the park service failed to do. What my old employer failed to do, which is to speak out against this travesty and to speak out to protect the cultural and natural heritage of these lands. It makes me absolutely sick to see. The park service was actually the agency that arrested these women, and they threw them in jail for 36 hours. They held them without access to an attorney or a phone call. I highly recommend everybody to reach the Intercept article that just came out. They were released late last week and now there is a movement to make sure the charges are dropped. This is off an existing larger-scale movement in Arizona to try and stop wall construction. We’ve had a number of massive rallies at Organ Pipe, along the San Pedro River, and throughout the Borderlands to draw attention to what’s happening, and to try and stop construction.
We have some major demands. As soon as Trump is out of office, all this activism, all this organizing is leading up to us being able to execute these demands. Number one, we want to see wall construction immediately halted as soon as Trump is out of office, on day one. Number two, we want to remove border wall sections in Wilderness areas and Wildlife refuges and cultural and historical sites where they are causing the most damage. Number 3, we want compensation, reparations effectively for the Border communities, for the tribal Nations that have seen so much destroyed just for a vanity project. That’s my time, and like Pedro mentioned, I post photos and videos from the border everyday on my Twitter account, so you can follow me there. Thank you.
Pedro Rios: Thank you so much, Laiken. Very moving in terms of the impact, and I think your presentation connects well. It’s a nice compliment to Norma’s presentation, as well, because we see a lot of similarities, and especially considering the ancestral lands that are being devastated. I’d like to invite our next speaker Ana Gloria Martha Rodriguez. Let me read her brief bio. Ana Gloria Marth Rodriguez is Kumeyaay from San Jose de la Zorra. She’s a member of TPE, Joy International, a grassroots organization. As she continues the family tradition of passing on the knowledge and expertise of the Kumeyaay people to the next generation, following the wishes of the elders to keep their language and culture alive and vibrant. She has classes at Kumeyaay Cultural nights once a month as part of her commitment to education. Mrs. Rodriguez is the interim director of the Sycuan Cultural Department. She is also an instructor at Kumeyaay Community College presenting classes in basketry, pottery and Kumeyaay food. She also assists with Kumeyaay language classes and the Kumeyaay tools class. Thank you, Marta for joining us today. I’ve had an opportunity to go to the site that’s under construction at this point and it’s quite devastating to see, but also moving to see that at least for a short period of time some of the blasting has been stopped. Marta, please present. Thank you.
Marta Rodriguez: Hello, everyone. My name is Ana Gloria Marta Rodriguez. Thank you for this opportunity. It is very disturbing to see a lot of the things going on right now. Very sad to have to live in seeing all this craziness right now by the border communities. With the government waiving all the laws, it’s very sad to see all this. Like Pedro was talking about, we are right now at the border wall fighting the wall. The wall is going through the Kumeyaay territory right now. For those who don’t know, the Kumeyaay nations on both sides of the border, we have 12 Kumeyaay reservations over here in San Diego County and 4 in Baja California. One of the things that the border wall is doing to our nation is separating our families, breaking our relationship with our families, the plants, the animals, and us. We always tell people this especially those over here trying to go to the border wall and educate the people who are working on the project over there like the border patrols.
The Kumeyaay Nation has been here since the beginning of time. Anywhere they go into San Diego County and in Baja, we’ll find human remains and artifacts. We believe these are our people, and I think it’s time for us to have this kind of conversation right now with the U.S. government. We didn’t ask for the wall. This is our family, we want to be together, so we need to be united, to stop all this desecration and be respectful to all native nations. I don’t have pictures right now of what’s going on at the border wall. We’ll find human remains, and we sued the government and it didn’t pass, so I guess they’re still working on it. Right now we have brothers and sisters at the border wall as we speak right now. Every time we go over there we do a ceremony, and at one point we were there to have a ceremony with people from Baja and this side of the wall. Together, the whole nation worked together, and there were military and border patrol agents, who were trying to stop us from having the ceremony. They were trying to time us, like “you have like 40 minutes to finish the ceremony,” and we said no, we’ll stop when we’re done. This is our homeland, we don’t don’t need to ask permission or have these guys tell us that we have 20 minutes to do our ceremony. We’re done when we’re done. That was very disrespectful for those people trying to stop us from having our ceremonies.
One of the things we’re doing, too, especially with all the issues with having our nation on both sides of the border, we have an international grassroots organization called, Te Pahua. We have people from both sides of the border, so we’re doing a lot of stuff to help our communities, not only with material things, but also to be connected. We have families that don’t see each other for years, so this is helping us stay connected again. It’s time for people to come over here to this side of the border, so they can have a job, so they can live here legally, this is their home, too. We have an agreement with the border patrol, so they can work with a permit, but we should not be asking for a permit this is our home. Am I running out of time?
Pedro Rios: You’re doing fine, Marta. I would also ask the presenters if you have your contact information or where people might be able to follow you, if you can include that in the chat. That way they can connect with you. And to provide a description of the area that Marta is talking about, it’s probably about 60 miles from San Diego going east. As Marta described, the terrain that’s ancestral Kumeyaay, and what the Kumeyaay have found it is that border patrol has lied in terms of not providing all the information regarding explosives that were going to be used in the land to dig up to 20 feet deep in order to install those 30-foot barriers that Laiken had in his presentation. It’s quite destructive work that border patrol is doing and that has waived all sorts of laws in order to do that. I know the legal challenge that Marta has recently experienced, was not favorable to the Kumeyaay,
Pedro Rios: Continuing. You know, we started in Texas and went to Arizona and went to the eastern part of San Diego County, we are now going into the Otay Mesa area and as close as we can get into the Pacific Ocean. I’d like to invite my friend and colleague, Dan Watman, to present next. Dan is the coordinator and founder of the Bi-National Friendship Garden at the San Diego/Tijuana border. This is as west as you can get along the US/Mexico border landscape. He is a Spanish teacher in San Diego and online, and lives in Tijuana. He documents border wall construction in Otay Mountain Wilderness, highlighting damage to the environment and is a member of the Friends of Friendship Park, which is currently working on a campaign called Build That Park that envisions converting the current Friendship Park from a militarized Zone to a truly bi-national park. Dan, take it away, please.
Dan Watman: Thank you, Pedro, and thank you everybody. I am honored and privileged to be here on this panel with everyone and flattered and a little nervous. Thank you for having me. Like Pedro said I’m a Spanish teacher. I’ve been teaching Spanish since the late 90s in San Diego and one of the reasons I love teaching and learning languages is it gives me the opportunity and allows me to get to know people across cultural barriers. I’m going to share my presentation here. I’ve been living in San Diego, mostly Tijuana, region, occupied Kumeyaay land, for the last 20 some-odd years. In the beginning of the 2000s, I started to explore around and discovered Friendship Park, and I just really like the idea of being able to make friends across a literal barrier. I brought my Spanish class to the border to do a language exchange with some friends in Tijuana, and think of different ways to get people to come together and make friends, so we did salsa dancing lessons, yoga classes, poetry readings and a drum circle here. We called them Border Encuentro events, and Bi-National Garden was actually one of those events back in 2007. The space where all this happens is called Friendship Park, and well it kind of became called Friendship Park when Border Field State Park was inaugurated back in August of 1971. Pat Nixon visited the area. And of course, Kumeyaay have migrated to the region for over eight thousand years up until about a hundred and fifty years ago. The picture on the right is of a Kumeyaay elder from Juntas de Neji, east of Tecate, Yolanda Meza, and honored us with her presence to do a workshop on Native Flora, the use of native plants in our binational garden. And the space for generations has been used by families who are separated by immigration status. There’s a myriad of events that happened sporadically at the park. Two of the, probably the biggest annual events, that happened are the Fandango Fronterizo that started in 2008, and Posadas Sin Fronteras, which started as a reaction to Operation Gatekeeper in the 90s. It’s the longest held annual event at the Friendship Park.
As other speakers have mentioned, there’s been laws that have been waived in order to build these walls, but I believe San Diego was the first place that the laws were waived in order to build border walls. Up until well 1994 or around the 90s, I believe the secondary wall was built in the San Diego/Tijuana region all the way up until about three and a half miles from the ocean. It wasn’t allowed to be continued all the way to the ocean because of environmental laws more than anything, but also native burial acts, and the newly-formed Department of Homeland Security was given the authority to override all and any laws in order to extend that wall back in 2005. In 2007 and 2008, they waived around 35 laws, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act. Laiken had a much more extensive list of all the laws that have been waived. Some of those are more important ones. That wall coming in threatened Friendship Park, and when the wall started to come in a bunch of us got together, including Pedro, American Friends Service Committee, several organizations, environmental organization, human rights organizations, got together to try and stop the wall with press conferences, and got letters from representatives, and documented the construction, and just tried to spread the word about what was happening. Nothing was stopping the wall. We just realized it was coming so quickly. This was way back in 2008, 2009, and we decided to put our eggs in one basket and try and save Friendship Park. John Fanestil, a local Pastor activist and now the Executive Director of the Via International, which is the fiscal sponsor of Friendship Park. He committed himself to doing binational communion before, and he committed himself to doing it every Sunday until he was physically stopped. Our coalition, now called the Friends of Friendship Park, got behind that effort and that was our attempt to try and stop the wall. We didn’t stop the wall, but we made quite a spectacle and created a really strong coalition, and still together today. We became the representatives of the community that talked to the San Diego border patrol to try and get some type of access back to the park.
These are some of the core members of the Friends of Friendship Park. When the wall came in 2009, after a few years, we had the community become quite creative. On the right, there’s an event we did with the telescope from a distance, by using sign language, so people could continue that idea of making friends across the border. Although, there was very little access allowed for the public after the secondary wall came in, and actually, the garden was removed in 2008. We were able to replant it and actually expand it from a rectangular design to three circles. You can see one of these circles from this kind of cool aerial shot here. John continued to do the communions even though the border church could no longer pass bread through the fence. They continued to do bi-national communions during the short window of time that border patrol allowed the public into the park on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The picture on the left is actually from before the wall came in, and the tenacity of the community and families continue to come to the park and meet any way they could. There’s mothers, every Saturday and Sunday, reunite with their son or children who haven’t seen them in 20 years, and grandparents and meet their grandchildren for the first time. After the wall came in this was the situation that they had in order to be able to meet. You can touch pinky fingers, you can come up close and pinky fingers or even kiss a pinky finger, or you can stand at a distance and be able to see each other better. Those were the options after the wall came in. That’s the way it’s been ever since.
Despite the fact that this was so horrible on the U.S. side, the Mexican side, of course, was wide open, so the community continued to grow. The garden was expanded and we put in food beds. Local food justice groups joined forces and we created food beds for the community, and more people got involved. The border church grew and became its own organization on the Mexican side. It’s an organization to help deportees and migrants in the region. On Sundays, before Covid-19, Border church would have large gatherings, we would harvest food from the garden and complement the food that the church brought to Friendship Park. Like I said, the garden, even though there was not much public access on the US side, Border Patrol was allowing volunteers to come in and upkeep the garden, and so it was looking very nice. The garden was actually doing very well, flourishing.
We weren’t happy with the lack of access, but the border patrol was pretty clear that there would be access allowed for volunteers at least for short tours, but no public access like there was before. So, we weren’t happy about it, but at least we knew what the rules were, until out of nowhere, unexpectedly, in January of this year, border patrol just demolished the whole garden on the US side. They raised all the plants all the way to the ground, about 150 native plants. They took out a 500 hundred pound eco bench that we had there. They removed a heavy-duty, high quality informational sign about the garden that was cemented into the ground. They basically made the garden completely disappear on the US side. Luckily, the Mexican side was still intact, and luckily, also a kind of a result of that was an outpouring of support from the community. It was a devastating thing to happen to the community. And on the right there, was kind of like a memorial that was done a few days after half of the garden was destroyed. The outpouring of support led to media coverage, and that media coverage put pressure, along with community support in general, on Border Patrol and they actually apologized and let us replant the Garden on the US side, partially. So, native plants, as many as you probably know, take a long time to grow, so it looks kind of funny now with these really small seedlings on the US side and big hearty trees on the Mexican side, but at least we have something intact.
We continue to work in the garden as best we can. We had right away the amount of people that were coming and helping the garden, increase dramatically after the destruction, but then of course Covid-19 along and that came to a halt. We had to kind of change our strategy and go out in small groups, so we’ve been going out in small groups of volunteers and dealing with restrictions in any way we can. The U.S. side is not very accessible as usual, so we end up watering through the fence. That’s pictures of us watering the plants through the fence from the Mexican side.
This is the 30-foot high bollard on the left there that other presenters have been talking about, and the see-through one is actually 18-ft high. It doesn’t look that high next to the other one, but that was the wall that was put in 2007 through 2009, and now in 2019, last year, it was replaced with this 30-foot high wall all throughout the entire San Diego/Tijuana region, except for Friendship Park. This shot is actually about a half a mile from the ocean, so pretty much the edge of Friendship Park, and now this 30-foot wall is slated to come through the middle of Friendship Park within the next couple months, so the garden and the park in general is under threat, again. Going east, that 30-foot wall that replaced the18-foot wall, happened in 2019, and then in 2017/2018, the primary barrier which was this kind of corrugated landing mat type fencing that was in place, was replaced with the 18-foot high bollard and fence throughout San Diego/Tijuana. This is about three and a half miles from the ocean, they’re putting in the 30-foot high wall in the background there. This is the very eastern edge of the San Diego/Tijuana region where they have, this is about 8 or 10 months ago, they had replaced the two barriers all the way up to the edge of San Diego/Tijuana regions. After that is the Otay Mountains, and just north of there is the open space, Otay Mountain open space preserve, and you can see on the hillsides there the grating getting ready for the walls, and their next project was to extend those walls into the Otay mountains, which they started to do this about 6-8 months ago and this is a shot. The protocol is to fill the bollards with cement, so that’s what this guy is doing. This shot was just a couple weeks ago at the same place in the beginning of Otay area, Otay mountain wilderness area. They’ve already built about two to three miles of wall there. This section here on the right there, that’s where the walls did end, and this was just put up within the last 2 or 3 weeks to extend that going down. They worked for months to put that trench in, they use dynamite and it’s extremely rocky terrain and it was a crazy engineering feat to just put a huge scar on the land and put up this ridiculous structure.
It’s kind of bittersweet for me to go out and hike and document this destruction because in order to get out there, and some of the remote areas they’re building, I get to hike through some native flora, native fauna. This plant on the right is a barrel cactus. It’s in the top 100 endangered species in Baja California. On the left is the yuca ripple, and this is a California buckwheat and it’s a really interesting planet, one of the only native plants that flowers all year long in the winter time and the. When the Kumeyaay used to migrate to this region near the ocean, they were here in the winter months and they would go to the east to harvest pinions, and one of the signs it was time to move East was the changing of the color of these flowers. It’s white in the winter, and then pink in the spring, and then turns rusty red in the summer. One more plant, so this plant is the white sage. Native plants in general in our region have root systems that go as deep as 30-feet, higher than the border wall. This particular plant was planted in 2011 in the Bi-National Garden and despite all the plants being raised to the ground I noticed a couple weeks ago that this sprouted up from the roots despite the destruction. For me, it represented those deep roots that even though it’s only 6 inches high the roots are at least 10-ft deep, and maybe as far as 30-ft deep, it really represents the roots our community, and gives me hope that we can create a different narrative for our region where people can come together in friendship and collaboration and in harmony with the earth. The Friends of Friendship Park have gotten together to start this campaign called Build That Park and we’re supporting a vision that was created by a local architect, Jim Brown, who has a design for the area with no walls that connect people through the fence, and the design is a rough design and we’ve created a campaign around it. Just started it last month called Build That Park and we’re hoping that in a year from now, on the 50th anniversary of Friendship Park, on August 18th 2021, we will have gathered community input and kind of spread the word and kind of make Build that Park a mantra for officials and people in general in order to create that new narrative for the border. Thanks so much.
Pedro Rios: Thank you so much, Dan. And just for everyone’s reference, I included two links in the chat. One is to the Build That Park so go check that out, and the other is to the Southern Border Communities Coalition which has a wealth of information and its new page called, Borderlands, and so there’ll be questions. Someone posted a question about how the border wall is funded. You can find some of that information there, as well as supporting what Dan said about the first waiver authority was for September of 2005 in San Diego, so you’ll find all that information in the Borderland. Check out those sites.
Our next and final speaker is Alejandro Ortigoza who will share with us about the work that he does along with his brother and a series of volunteers with the group called Armadillos. I’ll read his bio as he sent it to me. My mother and father are from Puebla. We migrated to Mexico City at an early age. My second migration experience was a trip to this side of the Border, approximately 15 years ago. My brother Cesar migrated a long time before me. For a long time, I’ve collaborated in Colectivo Mahmoud and learned from other groups and collectives. We saw the situation and need to support the migrant community. This vision led us to found Armadillos. For several years, we participated with other groups. The structure Armadillos is formed from human rights and the demands of different voices. In 2015, while we participated in the Caravan 43 with many other groups and collectives, we realized that there was much to do in the migrant community everywhere. Thus, after the Caravan 43 on October 26th, 2015, my brother, Cesar, and I founded Armadillos. I thank all the people who always support us as Mahmoud Collective and now with Armadillos. The process that we’re going to do is Alex will say part of his presentation in Spanish, then I’ll translate and we’ll take that format for his presentation. Alex, adelante.
Alex Ortigoza: (Already in Spanish)
Pedro Rios: I know that we have 2 short minutes. I’m not sure. Checking in with Laura to see if we can do maybe one question. I know that’s kind of unfair, but I think the presentations spoke for themselves. Laura, if you want to chime in to see if we want to do questions or if we want to maybe end it here. You’re on mute, Laura.
Laura Garcia: No, Pedro, go ahead. If there’s questions, we should take them. Those that need to leave, they can go ahead and leave. Before they do leave, I do want to say that we have our next panel on October 1st, so please put it in your calendar. We’re going to Tijuana and Mexicali, and Calexico to San Isidro. Let’s take some questions.
Pedro Rios: If you can post your questions in the chat. Just for the panelists, I know that we were scheduled to end right now at 5:30, so if you have to go that’s completely understandable. If you can spend another 10 minutes with us, and we would be truly grateful for that as well. Any questions? I see a lot of people thanking the panelists. Great job, everyone. Maybe a couple of questions if you have any, or maybe not. (Question for Alex already in Spanish)
Alex Ortigoza: (Answers in Spanish)
Pedro Rios: I’ll try to post those. They do have a GoFundMe and a Venmo. The funds go to support their work, for a lot of the tools, and for the excursions out, that do cost a lot of money, for their vehicles and for gas. I’ll try to find the Facebook post to place a link. Another question. For those of us that don’t live nearby, what can we do from afar to support your work on the border? I imagined this would be open for any of the panelists.
Dan Watman: Going to buildthatpark.org would be really helpful for our movement. There’s a petition online that you can sign, and there’s also an intake form where we’re asking people to share what their vision is for a truly by bi-national park.
Pedro Rios: Thank you, Dan. I just reposted that link in the chat. The question is when and where will this recording be posted? That’s probably more of a question for Laura and Bob.
Bob Lee: Yeah, we will post it soon on the People’s Tribune and El Tribuno del Pueblo’s websites. We’ll have links to them there.
Pedro Rios: There’s a question for Marta. Are there any rallies, organized events we can get involved in to support the Kumeyaay people in the broader San Diego region?
Marta Rodriguez: We have several. If you guys want more information about it, you guys can go on Facebook and they’re called Warriors Awareness. That’s where they post, usually the rallies or any kind of events and stuff like that. Just go on Facebook, and put Warriors Awareness and sometimes it’s Warriors Awareness Topics. They post have action to the Border, or they have events in San Diego.
Pedro Rios: Thank you. And I’m sorry I don’t have Facebook open, so I can’t post information from Facebook right now. It takes a lot of a lot of energy from the computer, so it would probably shut me down if I open it at the same time, but please do look up those recommendations on Facebook. Question from Maggie, what are the major coalition national organizations to follow should we rid ourselves of the plague in November, to raise up the Southern Border Communities Coalition, but as you know, a lot of the organizations that presented are local, so definitely follow the local orgs so you get a better sense of what the feeling is one the ground and how to support that effort locally from all the way to the RGV when Norma presented to coming all the way to San Diego.
Laura Garcia: And Pedro, can you hear me?
Pedro Rios: Yes.
Laura Garcia: I also need to say that we need to get Trump out of office. It is so important that we do that because he’s destroying not only the environment, he’s destroying lives, and our vote does matter, especially in this election. The reason we’re doing these panels is to bring awareness to what he has done to the immigrant community, the migrant community, and the border, so that we can get that man out of office. He does not deserve to be there. The latest thing that we have heard is that the women are having hysterectomies in the Detention Center in Georgia, and that’s under his watch. Maybe he didn’t do it directly, but it’s his policies, it is his rhetoric, and all the venom that he just foams out of his mouth. We really need to get him out of office, and try to talk to everyone we can to convince them that this time our vote does count because a lot of people don’t vote. We have a lot of work to do before November 3rd.
Pedro Rios: There’s a question about how many people die in their attempts to cross on a yearly basis. That number could be anywhere between three to five hundred people of human remains that have been found. There’s a higher number of people that are just not accounted for, so it’s definitely probably higher than that. Rochelle posted, no matter who is elected we so need to fight to hold elected officials accountable. Both parties have done irreparable harm to our immigrant communities. That’s true. I think part of the idea of talking about the border wall is that a lot of the border wall was already in place before Trump took office, and we know that Biden has voted for the border wall back when he was Senator. We have to hold everyone accountable as Kathy reiterated there in the chat. I do want to honor the time that people have and not take more time. Maybe we can take this as a final question. Texas and Arizona are contested states, for those working in those states to what extent are these issues around, which we organize to contribute to existing efforts?
Laiken Jordahl: I can speak to that little bit. In Arizona there’s something very, very personal about seeing the saguaro cactuses being bulldozed and chopped up. I mean it’s like an attack on our state’s icon, our state’s pride. When you look at polling data from Texas, from New Mexico, from Arizona, you have the majority of people in those states against building more border walls. I think public opinion has shifted. It’s come a long way since you know the Secure Fence Act, that passed more than 10 years ago. I think now the more attention we can bring to this issue, the more we can show people the true cost of walls and militarization, the more we can invigorate people to come out and vote in November, so I definitely think it serves a purpose to keep sharing these stories in terms of voter turnout.
Pedro Rios: Great, thank you. I’m just asking Alex if the link to the GoFunMe is the correct one for Armadillos.
Laura Garcia: Well, while he finds the information, I really want to thank everyone. All the panelists Dan, Laiken, Norma, Ana Gloria, Alejandro, and of course, Pedro our facilitator and organizer and coordinator of this panel. I think he did a great job in pulling everything together. So, thank you all. If you want information on the next panel, type in your email so we can get a hold of you, again. If you’re interested.
Pedro Rios: I just put the GoFundMe, again. Hopefully that’s the correct one. This concludes the panel. Thank you so much. Be on the look-out for more information. A very special thank you to all the panelists. I know you’re very busy. Laiken had the week off, so he was on vacation, so grateful for you as well. For Marta, I’m sure I’ll get to meet you at some point here in San Diego. Norma, thank you. Dan, gracias. Alex, gracias. And to all of you for participating in this evening, this afternoon, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much.
Panelists in this video are Norma Herrera, who coordinates a grassroots coalition working to stop border wall construction in the Rio Grande Valley and supports efforts to free people from ICE detention; Dan Watman, coordinator and founder of the Binational Friendship Garden at the San Diego/Tijuana border; Laiken Jordahl, Borderlands Campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity; and Alejandro Ortigoza, a co-founder of Armadillos, a group that searches for migrants who get lost in the desert while trying to cross the border. The moderator is Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S./Mexico Border Program.
